Chapter 93: Sasori: Flesh and Blood Are Weak, but Machinery Can Ascend!
A Tailed Beast Bomb was one of the most terrifying ninjutsu in the shinobi world. Even Kenichi suspected it had been designed with the logic of missiles and nuclear weapons in mind.
After all, the tailed beasts were living calamities that could roam freely. The bombs they spat out were overwhelmingly destructive. If not for the limitation of range, Kenichi would have seriously questioned whether he was looking at a chakra missile or a chakra nuke.
Back then, he had been curious about what would happen if a Tailed Beast Bomb met modern explosives head on. Unfortunately, there had only been the Nine Tails in the village, and on the night of the Nine Tails incident, he had not yet created a thermobaric bomb.
So there had been no way to test it.
It left him mildly disappointed.
Now, though, it was finally time to find out.
And if thermobaric weapons were already this strong, Kenichi could not help imagining an even crazier future. Missiles carpeting the battlefield. War being rewritten from the sky. Maybe even an era of interstellar conflict.
After all, the Otsutsuki were aliens. They could not have traveled to this world by casually flying through space. They had to have some kind of ship, or something similar.
"Kenichi, do you think the idea I mentioned earlier is possible?"
Sasori's voice yanked Kenichi out of his thoughts.
At the moment, Kenichi and Sasori were traveling along a quiet road. Kenichi planned to find a secluded spot, build a hot air balloon, and fly directly to the main battlefield in the Land of Frost.
"The soul binding part you mentioned is a real problem," Kenichi said. "But Sasori, if you already have that kind of idea, why not just become the AI yourself?"
He said it casually, but he meant it.
Sasori's proposal sounded naive to Kenichi. Entrusting the question of whether artificial intelligence would go out of control to the loyalty of a bound soul was gambling with human nature.
Humanity was full of contradictions. Some people were loyal for life. Others turned on you the moment the wind changed.
Even if someone was loyal today, what about tomorrow?
As power grew, ambition often followed. It took root, sprouted, then flourished until it swallowed everything.
History was full of examples. Dynasties rose because someone woke up one day wearing imperial robes, backed by overwhelming military power.
There were certainly people who held great power and remained loyal.
But how could you tell which kind someone was?
You could not see into a person's heart.
That was why Kenichi preferred taking matters into his own hands. If you relied on others, you were always one betrayal away from disaster.
Besides, Sasori had already turned his own body into a puppet. Why not go one step further?
If Sasori's main body was a puppet, and his brain was rebuilt into a supercomputer, would his combat strength not rise drastically?
Sasori slowed down, his expression thoughtful.
"Become an AI myself…"
The more he considered it, the more sense it made. Capturing others, cultivating loyalty, maintaining control, all of it took time and carried risks.
If he controlled everything personally, those risks shrank.
He could even build puppets with receivers that only responded to his own brain signals. No loyalty required. No faith required. Just command and execution.
Sasori's mind kept racing, branching into possibilities.
Kenichi had no idea his offhand remark had sparked such a chain reaction. If he had known, he might have pushed even harder.
The shinobi world was strange like that. Sometimes, a technological leap started with two people talking on the road.
And if Sasori grew stronger, that benefited Kenichi too.
The only concern was whether Sasori would lose his human emotions entirely after becoming something closer to a machine, then trigger a shinobi world version of an AI crisis.
Even if that trend appeared, Kenichi was not overly worried. An EMP would be enough.
And an Omnic Crisis was not that easy to replicate here.
The industrial level of the shinobi world was still low. Kenichi could not achieve nanometer precision, or even millimeter precision, in mass production. Making puppets in huge quantities would be difficult unless Sasori became Kazekage and forced Sunagakure to industrialize puppet manufacturing.
Even then, once Sasori stepped onto that path, the enemies he would eventually face were absurd. Madara. Hashirama. Monsters.
Even without resurrection, people like Obito and Nagato would already be enough to give Sasori a nightmare.
"Let's go," Kenichi said, shaking his head. "Even if you want to do it, that isn't something you solve overnight."
It was better to get the hot air balloon ready first. They could keep talking once they were in the air.
With experience from the first time, building a balloon was far easier. Before long, Kenichi and Sasori were drifting through the sky.
"Kenichi," Sasori said, watching him, "you really do like drinking tea."
He had met many strange shinobi, but someone who brought tea into a hot air balloon was a rare species.
"You don't understand," Kenichi said with a grin, lifting his teapot. "I'm nurturing this teapot."
That had been his idea ever since he bought it.
Teapot nurturing was not something you did with just any pot. The material and quality mattered. Supposedly, if you nurtured one well enough, even plain water poured into it would carry a tea fragrance.
When Kenichi was little, he had once "helpfully" cleaned his grandfather's dirty teapot.
That same day, Kenichi got beaten badly.
Sasori looked away and studied the balloon again, still impressed. "Your invention is practical. If you sold it, it would probably bring in a lot of money."
Kenichi's mouth twitched. "If this thing becomes common, the world will get a lot more interesting."
He had always suspected Kishimoto never introduced airplanes and similar technology into Naruto because it would have been a nightmare to keep drawing them and dealing with all the consequences.
The existence of an air force was a revolution in warfare, a completely new kind of revolution.
Before humanity even dreamed of space, air superiority decided battles.
If the shinobi world had an air force, wars would be even more brutal. A blitzkrieg against Sunagakure would make Iwagakure's proud cliffs meaningless overnight.
That was why even hot air balloons did not exist in the original world.
"Let's move," Kenichi said, shifting his chakra nature. He formed the technique and released Wind Release: Great Breakthrough, pushing the balloon forward as it surged toward the Land of Frost. "Konoha's people must be getting impatient."
Sasori watched the clouds slide past for a moment, then spoke again.
"Kenichi, do you think it's possible to build an aerial base?"
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